[solved] DR5000 loconet sensor problem

[Trip]

I'm putting this here for future googlers.

 

I got a DR5000 and plugged my watchmans (watchmen?) via a SSB-gateway into the loconet-T socket. When any of the sensors on the first watchman sent a HIGH signal there immediately appeared a contradictory LOW signal. When the train moved out of the block another LOW signal appeared. The other four watchman were not affected. Swapping out the DR5000 for my old DCS50 also solved the problem.

 

I moved the sensors over to a new watchman. That solved the problem. Then discarding the 'faulty' watchman and programming the new one with the same sensor addresses (1-16) brought the problem back.

 

The problem was this: the DR5000 ships with the S88 bus configured to think it's got 16 sensors attached. Since I had nothing plugged into the S88 bus those 'sensors' were always off. When sensor 1 on the loconet bus said HIGH the S88 bus said LOW and the LOW was sent over the loconet bus as well.

 

The solution is to change the config on the S88 bus and tell it there's nothing there. Hopefully that saves somebody else the several hours of testing I did.

 

Why on earth it ships with that config it is beyond my wit to imagine.